


five things to do in derry when you’re dead

by mfhp



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, IT Chapter Two Spoilers, M/M, homophobic clown (freeform)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 17:28:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20642951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mfhp/pseuds/mfhp
Summary: When he opens his eyes, there’s darkness out the window and a hand hovering over his chest.“You know,” Eddie mutters, squinting up at it. “You could at least buy me dinner first.”The answer he gets is an odd, choked noise. It’s halfway between a laugh and a sob.*Something dies. Something grows. The universe tries to keep itself balanced.





	five things to do in derry when you’re dead

For the entirety of 8th grade, start to finish, Eddie kept a post-it on the tenth page of his biology textbook. The caption was written in neat block capitals and underlined twice. Don’t Look. 

(“Aw, Eds,” Richie coos. “What’s the matter? No one ever told you about the birds and the bees?”

“Give it back,” Eddie snaps - Richie snorts out a laugh, textbook still held above his head, and says, “make me, shortstack,” - and then, yeah, Eddie had kicked him a little bit. And Richie had fallen out of his chair. And they’d had detention for a week. Whatever. These things happen.)

_ After the death of a living organism, _ page 10 said, _ its energy is redistributed into the ecosystem. _ There was a diagram underneath of a deer lying in a meadow. The deer looked very dead, and the grass looked very green - and the implication, as far as Eddie could tell, was that once you‘re gone, you have to help other things grow. Your atoms quietly disassemble and go off to be other things.

So what, Eddie had always thought. You’re supposed to give yourself up? Just like that? All those years spent living and that’s how it ends - another small body in the ground. Dirty and forgotten. He doesn’t want to end up being part of the grass, or the mud, or a mouse, or whatever. He wants to be Eddie. He has shit to do.

Eddie is forty years old. He’s unconscious. He lost that biology textbook twenty five years ago. He’s dying, even if he doesn’t know it. A few feet away something far more ancient is dying, too. This is very important, even if he doesn’t know it.

Up above, as the cavern crumbles apart, something starts to drip from the heart of it all - something colourless, odourless, cold to the touch. It is not rain. When it hits the pools of water on the ground, algae blooms. When it touches the bare earth, moss grows. When it lands on the bandage covering Eddie’s cheek, crusted with blood and sodden from gray-water, it seeps through.

Eddie is forty years old. He’s still unconscious. Something powerful and ancient is already dead, and he doesn’t know it.

The most important things, sometimes, are the ones we don’t know.

* * *

His first act as a dead man is to cough. He coughs a lot, actually, to the point where it makes him dizzy. Sitting up feels like a bad idea. He tries to do it anyway. The world swims in front of his eyes - Eddie shudders, closing them (he’s dealt with enough vomit today, thanks) and settles for propping himself up against the rock behind him instead. 

“Guys,” he says, muzzily. “What’re we doing?”

There’s silence. Eddie blinks, trying to adjust to the dim light, and as he does the memories flood back in like a lightning strike - Neibolt, the ritual, the fucking spider, the deadlights -

Richie -

“Holy fuck,” Eddie breathes, scrambling backwards, “holy - oh, shit, holy _ shit _ -“

Where is It - that should be his first priority, right? Find It, get away from It, find the others; unless they’ve been taken already, unless it’s about to take him too. There’s a tightness crawling up his throat that Eddie can’t control, and it bursts out with a choked sound that he muffles with the back of his hand. Something touches his left ankle: he recoils, scrambling back, his heart going so fast that it hurts. He steels himself as he looks down, and sees -

An earthworm.

Disgusting, sure. Dangerous...

Eddie chucks a pebble at it. He holds his breath, watching: but the worm doesn’t seem to notice. It doesn’t react at all. Nothing reacts, actually. The cave looks decimated - like a bomb exploded in it - but it’s also very still.

He’s in the aftermath of something, Eddie realises. Whatever happened here, it’s already over.

The others. Where are the others? 

“Rich -“ he manages, then breaks off to cough into his elbow. Fuck, his chest hurts. There was a sharper pain there before, he remembers that. Stabbing, sudden. Eddie rips open his shirt, his pulse skittering upwards when he sees the hole in it - the fabric’s torn, stiff with blood - but underneath… there's just whorls of scar tissue. They’re faded and pearlescent. The ridges are sensitive to the touch. Looking down at them is making him queasy, so he decides to stop doing it.

Eddie clears his throat.

“If you’re still here,” he calls out, “come get me. I’m not fucking scared of you.”

It’s not a lie. Mostly. It’s enough of one that his breath catches unsteadily as he listens to the silence. The rock he’s clutching digs into his palm.

He waits for a long time. There’s no reply except for water dripping in the dark.

The second thing Eddie does is walk.

The passage to the Neibolt house is completely caved in. So is most of the main cavern. It takes him twenty minutes or so to do a full lap of the tunnels and end up back where he started - and another ten to calm himself down from a panic attack.

“Okay,” he mutters. “Shit. Okay.”

There’s water soaking through the soles of his shoes. Eddie wrinkles his nose - Christ, what he’d do for a shower right now - and then does a double-take, staring down at the ground.

Clear water. Running water.

It’s a slow, weak current, as if the river’s only just woken up. Eddie follows it anyway, trailing through tunnels and ducking under pipes for what feels like hours - until finally, just as he’s getting too tired to walk, he sees a storm drain up ahead. The kind he’d been reluctant to walk into a long time ago.

It’s late morning, if he had to hazard a guess. Maybe midday. The sun is warm on his back. There’s a thick smell in the air, earthy, that says it’s been raining, and the river’s riding high along its banks. Higher than he’s ever seen it.

The Barrens feel quiet and loud all at once. There’s more noise than usual, to be honest - or maybe Eddie’s just not used to being here alone. It’s buzzing with midges; he gets startled by a frog on the riverbank, which in turn gets startled by him, and he’s pretty glad there’s nobody around to see him fall on his ass. By the time he’s reached the boundary fence and hopped over it, his legs are aching something fierce.

It’s another step forward, though. In fact, this is the easy part - he’s found the road. Eddie stops on the verge and looks at it, chewing his bottom lip.

He needs to find the others. And if they weren’t in the sewers, and they weren’t in the Barrens, that means -

“You alright, son?”

He has trouble placing the voice at first. Eddie’s heart is in his throat as he glances around wildly, until he notices the guy in the green Range Rover looking back at him. The driver’s side window is rolled down.

Stan’s dad had a car like that, he remembers, unbidden. His was stockier-looking, the way most cars used to be. The colour was the same, though.

Eddie swallows.

“I…”

“You need a ride?”

“Yeah, actually,” Eddie says. Then, remembering his manners: “Thanks.”

The guy tilts his head towards the passenger side door. Eddie climbs inside and feels the stranger’s eyes on him as he does. Jesus, he must look awful. He _ feels _ awful.

“I got caught in that storm last night,” the guy says, pulling away from the curb. “Guessing you did too, by the look of things.”

Eddie huffs out a laugh.

“Yeah,” he says. “I, uh. I was in the middle of it. Can you drop me at The Derry Townhouse?”

“Townhouse is flooded,” the strangers tells him, not unkindly. “Guests got moved to the motel down on the other side of town.”

Shit.

He needs to narrow it down, then. No point in trying to trace five different people at once - he should just pick one thread and follow it.

The third thing Eddie does is make a decision. It’s not, in all honesty, a difficult one.

“You sure you’re alright? Pardon my language, but... you look like you’ve been through hell, I don’t mind taking you over to the hospital -”

“I’m fine,” Eddie says. “Really. Thank you.”

* * *

Derry - flooded or otherwise, with or without an ancient evil underneath it - is still a small town. And in small towns, asking questions gets you everywhere.

“‘Scuse me,” Eddie says. The woman at the motel’s front desk turns to him, frowning. Her chewing gum smacks as she looks him up and down: sewer sludge, flood water, and bloodstains included.

“Just cleaned that,” she says, inclining her head towards the floor tiles.

“I’m looking for a friend.”

“Yeah, and I just scrubbed that floor,” the receptionist says. “Step outside, will you?”

“I’m looking for someone,” Eddie insists. “He - he’s here, I think? About this high, got a really annoying voice, square sort of jaw -“

The woman sighs. She smacks her gum again, clucks her tongue, then says, “Room 303. Careful how you walk on the carpet.”

That last part she says to his back. Eddie’s already gone.

Room 303, paradoxically, is on the first floor. It’s dark and empty, and it’s definitely Richie’s. Eddie can tell because of the unlocked door (would it kill him to be careful?) and the clothes strewn around the suitcase. There’s a stale smell in the air, corralled inside by closed windows and shuttered blinds. The relief that barrels into him when he walks through the door is so strong he’s scared he might fall.

It’s second nature, really. Eddie is exhausted, and his feet hurt, and his body aches. Eddie scrubs his skin pink in the shower. He picks the worst of the clothes off the floor and folds them; taking the cleanest shirt he can find (Hawaiian, oversized, hideous) for himself. He opens the window to let a breeze in. He fucks around with the blinds until they’re half-open.

He’ll stay awake, he decides, settling on the unmade bed and looking up at the ceiling. He’ll stay awake until Richie gets back, so they can talk.

The pillow cover under his head feels cheap. It’s still softer than anything he’s touched in recent memory. It smells faintly sweet, like someone else’s shampoo.

Stay _ awake_, he reminds himself - but it’s a vague, half formed thought. It drifts out of reach like smoke.

* * *

When he opens his eyes, there’s darkness out the window and a hand hovering over his chest.

“You know,” Eddie mutters, squinting up at it. “You could at least buy me dinner first.”

The answer he gets is an odd, choked noise. It’s halfway between a laugh and a sob.

Eddie blinks at the hazy shape above him as his eyes adjust to the light. He’s still lying down - he hasn’t left the position he fell asleep in - and there’s weight on the edge of the mattress like someone’s sitting on it.

Not someone, Eddie thinks. No more pretending. You know who it is.

He’s expecting a lot of things. A _ where the fuck have you been, _ maybe, or a _ how did you get in my room _\- but Richie just starts to shake. He’s clutching the collar of Eddie’s shirt like he’s expecting it to dissolve between his fingers.

“Where is it?”

Eddie frowns up at him.

“Where’s what?”

“There was,” Richie says, swallowing thickly. “There’s - It stabbed you, where’s the -”

His eyes skip from Eddie’s chest over to his cheek: Eddie touches the spot he’s staring at and feels the faint smoothness of scar tissue under his fingers. 

“Richie -”

“You were gone,” Richie insists, “you - I don’t -”

“I woke up,” Eddie tells him. “I woke up in the cavern, couldn’t find any of you. Shit, is everyone -“

“Everyone’s fine,” Richie says. “I mean, they’re not fine, but they’re... it was just you. Just you, Eddie.”

He’s been crying. There’s a streetlight across the road and the yellow beam of it is filtering in under the blinds, catching on Richie’s flushed cheeks and his red eyes. Eddie’s fingers itch. 

“Me who what?” Eddie asks, quietly.

Richie shudders. He shakes his head. Eddie leans up on his elbows, trying to get a better look at him.

“What happened?”

“We thought it was over,” Richie says; his voice is low, as if he’s talking to himself. “We thought it was over, and then it... I watched you die.”

“I remember my chest hurting,” Eddie says. His brow furrows. “I was talking to you.”

“You told me...” Richie breaks off. He lets out another one of those half-laugh, half-sob sounds. “You said, ‘Richie, I fucked your mom.’ And then I came back afterwards, I was trying to wake you up, but you were -“

“For what it’s worth,” Eddie says, softly. “I definitely did fuck your mom.”

There’s a short silence.

“You...” Richie starts, then stops. He’d sound incredulous if he weren’t so hoarse. His eyes are over-bright as he looks down at Eddie, really looks at him, like he’s drinking him in, and then he shakes his head - laughing again, breathless. He cups Eddie’s face in both hands.

“Hey,” Eddie murmurs. He reaches up to swipe a thumb under Richie’s eye. “Hey, don’t cry.”

He should say something. He should fix this. Eddie takes a breath, but Richie beats him to it.

“I’m sorry I left you in that shithole,” he mutters. “I’m sorry, I swear I didn’t want to -“

When Richie was small and Eddie was smaller, they both hated hay fever season. Eddie hated it because he could never catch his breath, and Richie hated it because Eddie hated it. On the worst days he’d get so frustrated - the fucking inhaler never actually helped, go figure - and Richie would tug him close, his arms wrapped around Eddie’s chest and his chin hooked on his shoulder. _ Just breathe, moron. You’re fine. _

Wordlessly, Eddie sits up and leans back against the headboard. Richie’s shoulders are broad but he fits against Eddie’s body anyway - he’s shaking again, his breaths coming in fits and starts. 

“I’m sorry,” he repeats. “Eddie, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” 

Eddie ducks his head. He noses Richie’s dark hair, eyes closed, then presses his mouth to the same spot until Richie exhales. He takes three slow breaths - each one a little deeper than before. Eddie watches him wipe his face with the back of his hand.

“I thought I was dreaming,“ he says, eventually. Eddie’s arms tighten around him.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Richie clears his throat. “I was - you scared me shitless when I walked in. Because I thought, crap, if this isn’t a dream...“

Eddie stays quiet. Richie huffs out a laugh, rubbing his eyes.

“Then I figured, if you were gonna kill me, why’d you fold all my fucking shirts?”

“‘Cause it was disgusting in here,” Eddie murmurs.

Richie twists around in his arms to look at him. His glasses have slipped halfway down his nose and his mouth is half-open around a reply - the fourth thing Eddie does happens so instinctively, he barely registers that he’s doing it. It’s the easiest thing in the world. 

It feels like another part of the conversation, somehow. As if they’re still talking. He kisses Richie’s lower lip, then the corner of his mouth. Richie surges up against him, cradling Eddie’s face in both hands as he ducks his head in closer, and then there’s no mistaking what kind of kiss this is: slow, purposeful, deliberate. Richie’s trembling again, just slightly.

“Where were you?”

It’s not accusatory. Just curious.

“Neibolt collapsed,” Eddie tells him. He feels dark hair brushing his throat. “Cave was nearly gone, too. I ended up following a stream out into the Barrens.”

Richie shifts against him. Moving closer.

“You were hurt, though,” he says, quietly. “I saw.”

This, to be honest, is the part that scares him most. This is what he doesn’t understand.

“I know,” Eddie says. “I… it was gone when I woke up. All of it.”

He swallows. Richie, for once in his life, stays quiet - he just waits, tapping his fingers in a slow rhythm on Eddie’s thigh.

“It was fucking weird. Like everything down there was alive, suddenly. Even the river felt different.”

Richie goes very still.

“Different how?”

“Not like that.” Eddie kisses the top of his head again. “Just… more.”

It’s hardly the best explanation he’s ever given. He isn’t sure if he’s even making sense at all - but maybe it doesn’t matter, because Richie just sighs, his body losing its tension, and noses at Eddie’s throat again. _ Keep talking. _

“So I kept walking ‘til I hit the main road. Met a guy who gave me a lift, talked the woman at front desk into giving me your room number. Then I realized you weren’t here, and also that you live in squalor.”

“Hey -”

“Most people,” Eddie points out, “when they see a floor, their first instinct isn’t to cover it in shit. You are fucking bizarre.”

“I’m not most people,” Richie says. “I’m too handsome.”

He kisses the underside of Eddie’s jaw once, twice. The corners of Eddie’s mouth quirk up.

“Yeah, all right,” he mutters, shoving Richie’s shoulders. “I get it.”

They stay quiet for a while. Richie is a warm, steady weight in his lap. His hair is soft under Eddie’s fingers. Eddie drifts, hazy with sleep, until his mind eventually stumbles back on topic.

“What about you?”

Richie yawns.

“Huh?”

“You,” Eddie repeats, tapping him gently on the thigh. “Where’d you go?”

“Oh.” Richie turns to face him. He looks caught off-guard, for some reason; there’s a faint flush visible on his cheeks. “The kissing bridge. I was gonna leave after I got back here.”

Eddie wrinkles his nose.

”This what you call packing, Tozier?”

“Fuck off,” Richie retorts, a grin ghosting across his mouth. Then, quieter: “There’s something I want to show you. In the morning.”

The words stay suspended in the air for a few seconds. _ In the morning_. They’re unfamiliar and rich with promise - the way the first day of summer feels. In the morning the world will unfold itself like a map. He’ll need to shower, get something to eat, and make sure Richie does the same. At some point they should meet with the others. They can take their time, though. They’ll have mornings after this one.

The fifth thing Eddie does the day he dies is kick Richie’s leg under the comforter.

“Come here,” he says, sleepily.

They’re face to face in the dark. Richie’s freshly showered and he’s settled just out of reach, but Eddie can see the outline of his face well enough to know that he’s staring. He’s always been like this; afraid that things will slip away from him if he doesn’t look at them directly.

Eddie shuffles closer, nosing at the hollow of his neck. It’s a gamble that ends up paying off - Richie’s arms fold around his shoulders automatically, and then their bodies are pressed close together the way it feels like they should be. The tension in Richie’s body slips away into the sheets.

“Sorry for scaring you,” Eddie says, not lifting his head. His voice is slightly muffled.

“I ripped your shitty shirt and thought you were a clown,” Richie mutters. “Let’s call it even.”

Eddie snorts.

“This is your shitty shirt.”

“It is?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, “and I’m trying to have a moment with you, so -”

“Could’ve said something,” Richie points out. Eddie rolls his eyes.

“_Fine_. Jesus. Then I’m saying something.”

He exhales.

“I want a moment.” It comes out more stubborn that he was expecting. “I feel like we deserve a moment, after all the… after everything.”

Richie goes quiet. He shifts, the sheets rustling, and Eddie can feel the way he readjusts his hold on Eddie’s shoulders. He feels a brief, warm pressure on his forehead.

“We can have a moment,” Richie agrees. “Shit, we can have tonnes of them. Anything you want.”

He deserves to be ribbed for it, really, the amount of unfiltered warmth in his voice. Eddie would do it himself, but the alarm on the side table says it’s five past midnight. He’s tired. It takes a lot out of you, being dead for a day.

“I mean it, Eds,” Richie says, softly. “Anything.”

There’s a lot of space between thirteen and forty. Change is unavoidable. It doesn’t leave much untouched. There are constants in Eddie’s life that run deeper than words could ever go: some of them hurt, and others are a comfort, but he holds all of them close to his body. Richie tastes like toothpaste and sleep, and his fingers spark warmth when they stroke down Eddie’s side and settle there.

Eddie wants to kiss him again. He does.

**Author's Note:**

> full disclosure i’ve only seen the movies once but the ending of chap 2 just wouldnt let me go man......anyways hope this makes sense and isnt overly ooc. thank u for reading ♡


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